Crispin Hull

The ACT Treasurer, Ted Quinlan, has said the ACT Government would not object to Totalcare withdrawing from its 50 per cent stake in the Williamsdale Quarry. He said that any ACT Government enterprise that could not provide some return or a wider benefit to the community would need to justify itself. He said that he would review all government enterprises.

That is a sensible approach for a new Government, though his statement of principle needs some refinement. He might also review all substantial subsidies that the Government gives to some enterprises.

The quarry is a classic example of a business the Government should not be in. There were other suppliers of stone available. There was no need for Government intervention to ensure the supply of a necessity. Even if the quarry made a profit, there would be little to justify government involvement. It should put its money where business cannot or will not put it.
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The Member for Fraser, Bob McMullan, has called for a third seat for the ACT. Mr McMullan represents the most populous electorate in the nation. The next most populous is the other ACT seat, Canberra, represented by Labor’s Annette Ellis. These two seats have an average of 109,000 voters. The Australian average is around 86,000. The ACT got just above the population mark for a third seat between 1996 and 1998 when the seat of Namadgi was created. Since then Australia’s average population growth has been higher than the ACT’s, so the ACT’s comparative population sits at a point just under the qualification for a third seat. The Northern Territory, on the other hand, has just got over the population mark for a second seat. Its two seats average just 55,000. The five Tasmanian seats have an average of 65,000 voters.

The result seems unfair – giving demonstrably unequal representation to ACT voters on one hand and Northern Territory and Tasmanian voters on the other.
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The Australian Institute of Sport has emerged too late in the piece over the question of the route for the Gungahlin Drive extension. After years of debate and an ACT election in which the question played a prominent part, the institute only now raises its head to object to the western route. And only then because it was asked about it in estimates committee in Federal Parliament.

It was made quite clear by Labor in the election campaign that if it came to power it would not put the road through O’Connor Ridge and that it would go via the western option.
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The plea of guilty to treason by George Speight and the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment will do little to resolve political difficulties in Fiji posed by the bitter racial divide on the islands. That divide arises because the descendants of indentured labourers brought by the British colonialists from India to work the sugar industry form about 45 per cent of the population. They have dominated commerce on in the island to the resentment of indigenous Fijians.

Speight is the scapegoat. He agreed to plead guilty to the high charge of treason ostensibly in a plea bargain so that half a dozen of his co-offenders would be allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of detaining hostages which carries a seven-year sentence rather than the death penalty. But many in Fiji, including its leading newspapers, suspect that the bargain runs higher, wider and deeper than that. There is a reasonable suspicion that Speight was not the leader nor the main instigator of the coup of May 2000 in which Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry his Cabinet and other MPs were held hostage for 56 days. Behind the scenes, some rich and powerful indigenous Fijians gave tacit support and others gave active support or even helped plan the coup, according to both Mr Chaudhry and reports in the Fijian press. They must now be sighing with relief at the end of the prospect of a full trial – with the possibility that a blame-throwing defence might point fingers higher and wider than just the accused.
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The chair of the ACT Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Legal Affairs, Bill Stefaniak, called last week for public submissions on the size of the Assembly. His call comes at a time when the South Australian Parliament is under irresistible pressure to cut its numbers. That was one of the conditions put before both major parties by the Independent who won the balance of power at the last election.

But it also comes as the number of voters each MLA has to look after is increasing. According to a fact sheet issued by the committee, at self-government in 1989 there were about 10,000 voters per MLA. Now there are 12,934. We have also had our Federal representation cut recently from three members of the House of Representatives to two.

The fact sheet cited the ratio in Tasmania at 1:8221 (and falling) and in the Northern Territory at 1:4420. If local councils in those two jurisdictions are considered the ACT’s ratio is much worse.
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The question of a light rail between Gungahlin and Civic is back on the agenda.

MBA Group project manager Ken Ineson urged the ACT Government to move quickly on the light-rail link before benefits were lost. He argued that international experience showed that light rail attracted commercial development along the route because developers liked its permanency. This meant that land values would rise. Mr Ineson thought that the Government would be able to recoup the $80-$100 million to build the link within five years by reaping the rewards of increased land value. He thought the opportunity need to be taken soon before land next to the route was sold off.

The Government should treat the proposal with a great deal of caution. Transport schemes should rely on their own commercial viability rather than on increased land values. Too often developers pick up the windfalls from increased land values, rather than the community through the Government.
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The evidence is slowly coming in that the Federal Government – taken collectively – lied before and after the election about asylum seekers in order to gain political advantage and win the election and to justify its actions after the event.

It lied in telling the Australian people that people seeking refugee in Australia had thrown their children overboard in order to blackmail Australia into rescuing them.

It lied in telling the Australian people that asylum seekers in detention had sewn their children’s lips together in order to blackmail the Australian Government into taking them out of detention.

It exaggerated the possibility that some of the boat-people seeking asylum were terrorists and security risks – to the extent that the Australian people were deceived.
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The Federal government has launched yet another attempt to change the unfair dismissal laws. Once again it is going about it the wrong way. It wishes to exempt small businesses – those employing under 20 people — from the provisions. The change offends normal principles of equality before the law. Why should one employee get a different set of rights from another, just because their employer happens to employ a higher number of other employees? The principle should be that employees should be treated fairly, irrespective of the nature of their employer.

The Government has called its latest attempt to change unfair dismissal laws the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill. This Orwellian renaming fools no-one. Its real intent is the Small Business (Capricious Sacking Now Allowed) Bill. It is fundamentally unfair to discriminate against one class of employees.

The Government makes the point that the new law would make it more likely that small businesses would employee more people. Maybe so, but under that theory all sorts of employee and public protections could be removed in order to create employment. In any event, the Government’s claims about the new laws creating 53,000 jobs are untested. There may be some, but it would be difficult to quantify.
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From march 26, smokers in the Tasmania’s Public Service will be required to clock in and out when they leave the office for a smoke. Under an agreement worked out with the union workers will be required to make up for every minute spent outside smoking. The idea has been picked up by anti-smoking campaigners, who applaud it.

But the idea is based on a fallacy that there is a precise amount of time-off that smokers get which non-smokers do not. No human is capable of working undistracted by non-work things for exactly eight hours a day. All employees day-dream, play cards on the computer, send personal e-mails, make personal calls on the phone and so on. Provided this time is within reason, employers would be silly to prohibit those activities. It would drive employees to become counter-productive zombies.
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AN unseemly brawl has broken out in the Coalition over the Speakership and Deputy Speakership of the House of Representatives.

The normal pattern for the Coalition when in Government has been for the Liberals to vote for contenders among Liberals for the Speakership and for the Liberals to take that position. The Nationals then vote among themselves for the deputy Speakership and take that position. When the full House meets the Colation puts up only one candidate for each position (the Liberal and National who won the ballots in their party rooms) and they get the positions because the Coalition together has more votes on the floor of the House than Labor.
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